A Song of Sorrow
by WolverineKILLS
Summary: Sandor Clegane and Sansa are married, with children. After Sansa falls deeply ill, their eldest son Sandor struggles to cope with both his grief and his relationship with his father.


Sandor was in the yard with his brothers when Maester Arnell came for him. "You're up," he told Ned, pulling off his helm. Despite the chill of the autumn air, a sheen of sweat coated his brow. He looked to his other brother. "Watch him on the riposte this time. He's quick."

Brandon scowled. "I know," he said angrily, grabbing for his sword.

Sandor frowned, a part of him wishing now to stay and watch the duel; while Ned was the smaller and younger of the two, he had a quick sword and plenty of patience—and he almost always won against Brandon.

But he couldn't stay. The look the maester wore was deeply grave, and it was enough to make Sandor's stomach plunge to his toes.

"Your mother wishes to see you, my lord," said Arnell softly.

He followed the maester across the yard and inside. They climbed the steps of the tower in silence, Sandor trailing behind the older man, his limbs weighing heavier than iron anchors.

The door to his parents' rooms was slightly ajar. Sandor quietly peered through the crack, even though he already knew the sombre scene awaiting him—it had been unchanging for months now. As always his father was there, hunched alone beside the bed, looking down upon his dying wife.

When Sandor's mother had first taken ill, his father had sat with her only periodically; like everyone else, he'd believed the sickness to be naught more than a passing fever. But then when Arnell told him that she would not get better, the Lord of House Clegane crumpled from his duties and the world, and refused to leave his wife's side. Once a proud man—a hard man, too—he sat by her day after day, slowly wilting with defeat.

Sandor knocked, and his father immediately straightened. When he saw it was his firstborn standing there, he made a lazy gesture for him to enter, already turning his gaze back to his wife.

Sandor stepped into the room and quietly closed the door behind him. "Maester Arnell says Mother wishes to see me."

"Aye," his father grumbled. His face had become hardened with sadness, his grief now chiselled upon him as permanently as stone.

Sandor sat opposite him on the other side of the bed, where he gently took his mother's hand in his own. It felt as brittle as old parchment, and just as thin. "I'm here," he told her, the words catching in his throat.

It took a few moments for her to respond. When she did, her eyelids fluttered weakly until they were opened just enough to see him. Although still young, all that remained of her beauty was in her eyes, which still radiated as blue as a summer sky. She tried to smile. She tried. "Sandor," she said, her voice a soft, rasping sound that he had to lean in to hear.

"Mother," he said, trembling. "Rest, don't waste your words on me." But in truth he wanted little more at that moment than to hear her voice, the way it had once been—a story, or one of her songs, like she used to sing for him when he was a boy.

"Promise me," she rasped weakly.

"Anything," he nodded, and she gestured for him to lean closer. He did so, until her tired lips kissed his ear.

"Take care of your father," she whispered.

When he lifted his head to look at her, her eyes were closed again. Her breath came in gentle, slow wheezes that were hardly there at all. "I will," he promised.

Opposite him, his father still had not moved. Sandor carefully looked up at him, but then was quick to divert his gaze. The elder Clegane's face had contorted with pain, his eyes awash with tears, his mouth set into a tight, trembling frown. He was a stranger, a man Sandor had no right to have glimpsed.

When he stood up to leave, his father neither looked up nor made an effort to stop him.

Sandor stood outside the room with Maester Arnell. A silence more empty than winter filled the space around them; it did not lift for many minutes, not until a single broken and agonised sob suddenly ruptured the stillness. Then the silence almost immediately returned, and when it did the world became a darker place.

"My lord," said the maester solemnly, "you have my deepest sympathies…"

Sandor hardly heard the words of condolence. "She's gone." The two words sounded hollow and meaningless as they left his lips. "She's gone," he said again, louder this time, and looking down at Arnell; the words felt real that time. "Bloody hell."

He staggered away, needing to find his siblings before they heard the news from someone else.

"Brandon, Ned!" he called numbly when he had reached the yard. They ignored him, focused intently on their intense duel. As usual, Ned held the advantage, but Brandon's angry determination kept him in the fight. Sandor shouted at them again, and this time they both stopped.

He told them quietly, inside the castle, away from others. Ned cried, as Sandor had known he would, but Brandon's face only went hard, and then without uttering a single word he stalked off to be alone.

"I have to go tell Leonor now," Sandor said.

His brother nodded, too saddened to speak. Sandor stood up, giving Ned's shoulder a gentle squeeze, and then went to find their sister.

Leonor was the youngest of the four children borne to Sansa and Sandor Clegane, and she was their father's favourite. There had been a time, years ago now, when he had envied his sister the affection of which she was the effortless recipient of; when Sandor was a boy, his father had been as hard as the dead of winter. He'd been that way with Brandon as well, and to a lesser extent Ned. Only when his daughter was born did he learn, finally, how to apportion a little of the tenderness he'd only ever given his wife. But by that time the boundaries of his relationship with his firstborn were as set as steel.

It was Sandor's mother who had eventually eased his bitter resentment, maintaining the peace as she always did. He paused outside of Leonor's door and tried to will away the tears burning in his eyes. Suddenly his mother's voice echoed inside his head—not the sickly, rasping voice, but the beautiful one that sang like a song. _"You will always be loved."_ Words she'd spoken to him every single night, up until the night when he had insisted he was too old to hear them anymore.

With a heavy, hurting ache in his heart, Sandor stood square to his sister's door and knocked. When she answered, his insides tightened for a moment—the girl was the mirror image of their mother, and just as beautiful.

Leonor looked up into his face and knew without having to be told. She fell into his arms and cried. They both did.

In the many long days that followed, streams of visitors came to offer their sympathies. The king arrived with his own young family. He was handsome, the king, only a few years older than Sandor, and had the same eyes as his sister, Tully blue, which stood out under the frame of his wild, auburn hair. It was Sandor who stood to receive the royal party on behalf of his broken father.

Not even Leonor had been successful in coaxing Sandor Clegane away from his rooms. He took no meals, and he refused visitation. Nevertheless, the time at last arrived when Sandor had little choice but to confront the man. It was a task he deeply dreaded; never in his life had he once stood up to his father.

When he entered the room where his mother had taken her last breath, he was met with shadow and silence. "Father?" he whispered into the darkness.

The hulking silhouette of a shattered man stirred, still seated beside the bed. "Leave," came Sandor Clegane's faint, rasping voice.

"Father, Rickon is here, and he wishes—"

"I said to bugger off!" The shadow of his father suddenly stood up, momentarily resembling the large, powerful man Sandor knew him for. He flinched back a step.

"Father," he tried again, speaking both firmly and shakily at once. "Mother is _gone_. She needs to be laid to rest. People are beginning to talk."

"Piss on the bloody people." His father's voice splintered as he spoke.

Sandor paused, unsure of how to proceed. "And how about us?" he said at last. "Leonor and Ned need you."

"Ned's almost a man," came the grumbled response to that.

"Seven hells," Sandor said angrily, "Father, _I'm _not even a man! Yet here I am acting a lord, doing _your _bloody duty." His heart thudded madly in his chest. He waited, feeling both angry and afraid, but in the end his outburst was met with silence.

"What of Leonor then?" he said after a while. "At least go to her."

"I can't," his father replied, suddenly choking on his words. "Your mother…"

Sandor clenched his fists in anger. It had been difficult for _him,_ too, over the past few days, having to look at his sister's face and seeing his mother, but at least he'd had courage enough to do so. "You're a coward," he said disgustedly.

When his father did not deny this, Sandor scoffed. "We are laying Mother to rest on the morrow," he said, and then left the room as quietly as he'd entered it.

Lady Clegane, his mother, was buried the following morning upon a hill facing east, where she could always watch the sunrise. A large willow tree loomed over her place of rest, where songbirds sang and beneath which wildflowers grew. It was a private, sombre burial that belayed the blissful beauty of the place.

When it was over and the small party turned to head back to the castle, Sandor Clegane made no move to follow.

"Go on," Sandor told his sister. "You and Ned go along with Brandon. We will join you shortly."

He waited until everyone else had departed before stepping up beside his father. They stood together in a silence as heavy as his heart. "She loved this spot," he said after a while, needing to say something.

"Aye," muttered Sandor Clegane in agreement, "she did." His deadened eyes stared down at the chiselled likeness of his wife, a stone statue marking all that was left of her.

"She used to take me here when I was a boy. It was so bitterly cold back then, but still she would stand here and look out at the horizon, telling me stories from her childhood. It was on this very spot she first told me about how you rescued her from King's Landing." Back then it had been his favourite story, a far better one than all of those fantastical tales other children grew up cherishing. "You were her knight, she said."

When his father did not reply, Sandor sighed and looked back to the stone remains of his mother. "I'm not ready to be a lord," he said plainly.

"No one is," Sandor Clegane grumbled. "I only ever did it for her." He paused, his mouth tightening. "And you."

Sandor suddenly looked back up at his father, and for the first time in his life he saw someone who was neither his father nor Lord Clegane, but a man whose hideously burned face only one person had ever fallen in love with; a man whose world had just been shattered.

A swell of sorrow twirled tight inside of his stomach then, but he was too much like his father to apologise for having called him a coward. "Maester Arnell has been very helpful," he said instead. "I don't mind acting as lord a while longer, should you need me to."

A gentle breeze flitted through the autumn leaves then, and they sang softly in response. Sandor Clegane continued to stare down at his wife's stone face, his mouth trembling as he fought to maintain his hard composure.

Sandor had the grace to look away. "It's cold," he said.

For one quick moment Sandor Clegane allowed his eyes to leave his wife's effigy. He glanced up at the sky, taking in a sharp, shaky breath. "Aye," he softly agreed. "Winter is coming."


End file.
